Biden to fundraiser crowd: 'You all look dull as hell'

It may not be a top tip in the Toastmaster's guide, but Vice President Joe Biden did win back the attention of a sleepy audience of donors Friday when he jokingly berated them for being "dull as hell."

"I guess what I’m trying to say without boring you too long at breakfast –- and you all look dull as hell, I might add," he told a crowd of more than 200 fundraisers from the Turkish and Azerbaijani communities in Washington DC. "The dullest audience I have ever spoken to. Just sitting there, staring at me. Pretend you like me!”

The comment was met with laughs, per a White House pool reporter on the scene of the $2,500-per-ticket fundraising breakfast.

At the end of his remarks -- which included specifics about America's relationship with Azerbaijan and Turkey, "one of our most valuable and proudest allies" -- Biden wrapped up with the explanation that he was "boring you as much as I’m boring myself."

It's not the first time that the affable veep has kidded a less-than-excited bunch of donors with some light-hearted jabs at their lack of attentiveness to his remarks.

At an October 2010 fundraiser for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Tom Barrett in Madison, Wisconsin, Biden similarly called his listeners "the dullest audience I've ever spoken to!"

Barrett lost that election but is currently running again in the state's gubernatorial recall contest.